It is a hit piece, plain and simple.
NBC News dropped an “exclusive” report Monday evening revealing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s great-great grandfathers owned slaves roughly 150 years ago.
“Sen. Mitch McConnell’s great-great-grandfathers owned 14 slaves, bringing reparations issue close to home,” reads NBC News’ headline.
The story was aggregated soon by national newsrooms, including the Washington Post, which went with this headline: “Mitch McConnell’s ancestors owned slaves, according to a new report. He opposes reparations.”
I have heard of “sins of the father,” but “sins of the great-great grandfather” is a new one. This is a clear-cut attempt by NBC to smear McConnell. This report is meant to tie him to villainous behavior from nearly two centuries ago. The implication that McConnell bears moral guilt for the actions of his distant ancestors is absurd. And that is clearly what NBC is aiming for in this story. It is either that or NBC is suggesting that McConnell, whom the newsgroup is careful to note opposes reparations, bears some sort of legal responsibility for what his ancestors did nearly 150 years ago.
The U.S. Constitution (Article 3, Section 3, cl. 2, specifically) rejects “corruption by blood” for those found guilty of treason or rebellion. That is a special case, but the idea is also well-established in our laws that children are neither criminally liable for their parents’ misdeeds nor required to pay their debts in death beyond the value of their estate.
McConnell, who like two-thirds of Americans rejects the idea of reparations for slavery suffered by people long dead, is not legally or morally responsible for the acts of his ancestors, a point that the NBC article itself concedes: “Slavery experts have stressed that descendants of slave owners should not be held personally responsible for the deeds of their forebears.” Wow, you needed an expert to tell you that?
This NBC hit piece, timed perfectly for McConnell’s Senate challenger to announce her candidacy on MSNBC the same day, is exactly that: a hit piece. Amazingly enough, some national reporters are pretending like it is something special, that it is a genuine investigation into the pertinent details of a senior U.S. lawmaker’s personal background.
Come on, people. It is not like McConnell’s been running around claiming Native American ancestry to get himself hired. That would be a real story, if some senator ever did that.
“Readers can take what they want from it, and I suspect reactions will vary by reader. It’s information they didn’t have before on a topic that’s in the news regarding a person who is making news on that topic and is in a position to make policy or stop policy from being made,” said NBC News’ Jonathan Allen, awkwardly attempting to justify what his newsroom published.
Oh, stop it.
The point here is to insinuate that McConnell bears moral or legal responsibility for what was done by long-dead people he never knew. The point is to propose that the Senate Majority Leader has a – ahem – problematic past on top of currently holding a problematic position on reparations.
